A New Approach for South Sudan

By Andrew S. Natsios

July 28, 2015

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CreditCreditTyler Hicks/The New York Times

For a year and a half South Sudan has been torn apart by a civil war. The multitribal coalition that ruled the country after it gained independence from Sudan in 2011 — and that had governed the area for some years before then — has collapsed. The conflict was triggered by the competing personal ambitions of the leaders of various factions within the ruling party, as well as a dispute over whether the government of South Sudan should cooperate with, or try to unseat, the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Although the conflict did not start as a tribal war, President Salva Kiir, who is Dinka, and his rival Riek Machar, the former vice president, who is Nuer, have both appealed to clan loyalties to rally supporters and recruit soldiers, giving the conflict a poisonous tribal dimension.

Since the war broke out in December 2013, several tens of thousands of South Sudanese have been killed and more than 2.2 million people have been displaced. A famine is ravaging parts of the country, especially the states of Unity and Upper Nile. Unicef warns that 50,000 children may die. U.S.A.I.D. said last month that up to 4.6 million people would face life-threatening hunger within weeks.

Several rounds of peace talks have been held in Ethiopia since 2014, mediated by the bloc of East African countries known as IGAD, as well as the United States and several European countries, among others. But the negotiations have repeatedly failed, and so earlier this month the United Nations Security Council blacklisted six rival South Sudanese generals (though neither Mr. Kiir nor Mr. Machar), freezing their assets and restricting their right to travel. Current talks are stalling, stymied in part by disputes over power sharing. While in Addis Ababa on Monday, President Obama pressed all parties to produce a peace deal by Aug. 17, or face more sanctions.

But such measures will not change the warring factions’ basic calculus — not when the parties are fighting for their very survival. On the other hand, sanctions have angered and alienated the military and political elites on both sides in South Sudan, reducing the leverage of Western governments over them.

The so-called IGAD-Plus talks have failed to bring about a viable peace agreement because some of the mediators are not impartial brokers. Khartoum reportedly has been pouring weapons into South Sudan, to keep the country mired in turmoil. The most effective military troops there now are the Ugandan People’s Defense Force, which President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda sent in to help Mr. Kiir, who is a friend and ally, stay in power. Ethiopia, which has a significant Nuer population, can press only gingerly the Nuer rebel leaders and commanders in South Sudan.

An entirely new approach is needed if the current negotiations fail, as seems likely. The United States government and European countries should initiate new talks with new sponsors. And the immediate priority of those discussions should be to weaken the military capacity of the warring parties while urgently brokering a humanitarian cease-fire.

The United States and European governments should start a high-level diplomatic effort, particularly with the heads of state of Sudan, Eritrea and Uganda to try to neutralize those countries’ involvement in the conflict. The talks should be moved out of the region to more neutral ground, perhaps somewhere in West Africa. Washington, in particular, should press Uganda to withdraw the military forces it sent to South Sudan to assist Mr. Kiir. (Washington has a military assistance program with Uganda, and thus leverage over the Ugandan government.) A weapons ban should be imposed to prevent weapons, equipment and ammunition from flowing into South Sudan, particularly from Sudan to Mr. Machar’s rebel forces. The ban could be monitored by some of the roughly 12,000 United Nations peacekeepers who are already on the ground.

At the same time, mediators should broker a humanitarian cease-fire in the famine-affected areas. With technical assistance from the United Nations, corridors should be established so that food and health programs can urgently be delivered to the populations most at risk. Implementation could be overseen by a neutral international party, such as Norway, which has successfully performed that function in the past.

Senior military commanders from the two sides should be included in the negotiations. In fact, they must be: When in the past the government in Juba has issued humanitarian access permits to United Nations relief agencies, commanders in the field have ignored them and stopped aid shipments. If the commanders themselves participate in the talks, they will be more likely to enforce what they have negotiated. In exchange for their cooperation on a humanitarian cease-fire, existing sanctions could be lifted.

There is a promising precedent for such a proposal. In 2001-2002, after many years of war between northern Sudan and southern Sudan (at the time South Sudan was still part of Sudan) and many rounds of failed peace talks, the United States, British and Norwegian governments convinced the Sudanese government in Khartoum to agree to a humanitarian cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains, a region of northern Sudan allied with southern Sudan and where civilian casualties were especially severe. This modest effort restored enough trust between the warring sides that wider-ranging issues could then be broached — ultimately leading to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the end of the 22-year-long conflict and later independence for the South.

As soon as a workable peace agreement is in place, local Christian churches and local civil society groups should be encouraged to start grassroots reconciliation initiatives, especially to ease tensions between the Nuer and the Dinka. The churches in particular, which claim the loyalty of 60 percent of the population, are a rare indigenous actor with both moral authority and a reach that transcends tribe and region. Before independence in 2011, they provided a modicum of public services in disaffected areas and acted as mediators in local disputes over, among other things, cattle rustling and grazing rights. International aid agencies should fund the training of church leaders in mediation techniques and set up a pilot program to create local dispute-resolution committees using church leaders, with a view to eventually extending it across the country.

Urgently putting in place a humanitarian cease-fire could help not only avert a catastrophe, but also build confidence between the parties. This in turn would set the stage for broader negotiations on political issues: widespread corruption, the distribution of oil wealth, a new constitution — all matters that must be resolved if peace and political stability are ever to return to this long-suffering region.

Andrew S. Natsios is director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, and a former United States envoy to Sudan.